Provincial Attraction Guides

Two hours east of Xi'an rises one of China's most dramatic mountains. Mount Hua (Hua Shan) is the westernmost of China's Five Sacred Mountains — and the one with a reputation that precedes it: the most dangerous hike in China. Its cliffs are so steep that for centuries pilgrims crossed them on wooden planks bolted into sheer rock, and today visitors still queue to walk that same "Plank Walk in the Sky."

In the 7th century, the monk Xuanzang returned to Xi'an after 17 years traveling to India — the real-life journey behind Journey to the West. To house the Buddhist scriptures he carried home, he built a brick pagoda at the Da Ci'en Temple in 652 AD. That tower, rebuilt and enlarged under Empress Wu Zetian, is the Big Wild Goose Pagoda that still stands at the heart of Xi'an today.

Unlike most Chinese cities, where ancient walls survive only in fragments or museum exhibits, Xi'an still has its complete Ming-dynasty city wall — a 13.7-kilometer rectangle of rammed earth faced with brick, built in the 1370s and still standing guard around the old city center. It's the best-preserved city wall in China, and one of the few places in the country where you can ride a bicycle around an entire ancient city.

Xi'an was the eastern terminus of the Silk Road — and for over a thousand years, Muslim merchants and their descendants have lived at the center of the city. Their neighborhood, the Muslim Quarter, sits directly behind the Drum Tower in the old city. Today it's a labyrinth of narrow lanes lined with more than 300 halal food stalls and restaurants — one of the biggest and most authentic Muslim food districts in China.

For centuries, the heart of Xi'an beat to two buildings: the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower, standing 500 meters apart at the exact center of the old city. In the Ming dynasty, the bell was struck at dawn and the drum at dusk — a city-wide signal for when to open gates, start markets and end the day. They were the clock of an imperial capital.

At the foot of Mount Li, 30 kilometers east of Xi'an, lies a palace that has hosted emperors for over 3,000 years. Huaqing Palace began as a Zhou-dynasty resort, expanded into a Tang-dynasty royal retreat, and is best known today for two things: the love story of Emperor Xuanzong and Concubine Yang Guifei, and the 1936 Xi'an Incident that changed modern China.

A 2.1-kilometer pedestrian street in south Xi'an has become one of China's most photographed night attractions — and it's completely free. Datang Everbright City is a full-scale recreation of Tang-dynasty Xi'an: lantern-lit architecture, costumed performers, poetry written in light on the buildings, and crowds that feel like a festival every single night.

Eighty kilometers northwest of Xi'an, the Qianling Mausoleum holds the only husband-and-wife imperial burial in Chinese history: Emperor Gaozong of the Tang dynasty and his wife Wu Zetian — the only woman in Chinese history to rule as emperor in her own right. In nearly 1,300 years, no one has successfully looted or opened the main tomb. Its underground chamber remains untouched, sealed behind the mountain it was carved into.

In 1987, workers repairing a collapsed Tang-dynasty pagoda at Famen Temple, 110 kilometers west of Xi'an, made one of the great Buddhist archaeological discoveries of the 20th century: beneath the pagoda's foundation they found an underground crypt (地宫) sealed for over a thousand years — containing a relic believed to be a finger bone of the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni. It is the only known example of this relic anywhere in the world.

South of Xi'an rises Mount Taibai (Taibaishan), the highest peak of the Qinling Mountains at 3,767 meters — and the highest mountain in eastern China. The Qinling range is China's great natural divide, separating the north and south of the country: rivers on the north slope flow to the Yellow River, rivers on the south slope to the Yangtze. Climbing Taibai means standing on the watershed of an entire nation.

High on a hill above the Yan River stands the Yan'an Pagoda, a 44-meter Tang-dynasty brick tower that became the most recognizable symbol of modern Chinese history. From 1937 to 1947, Yan'an was the base of the Chinese Communist Party — and the pagoda, lit red at night, has become the visual shorthand for that era. For Chinese visitors it's a place of pilgrimage; for international travelers it's one of the most historically charged sites in the country.

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